Democrats aren’t the only ones balking at President Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill as it returns to the U.S. House from the Senate.
During a fiery Tuesday hearing, hard-right Austin-San Antonio Congressman Chip Roy showed himself to be one of two Republican holdouts on the bill serving on the House Rules Committee. The other is U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina.
In a Politico interview after the hearing, Roy called the legislation “garbage” and said its chances of passing before Trump’s arbitrary July 4 deadline are “a hell of a lot lower than they were even 48 hours ago.”
“My colleagues in the Senate failed us,” Roy said during the tense hearing.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the initial Republican holdouts in the upper chamber, ended up caving and voting for the bill despite the Senate Parliamentarian’s rejections of carve-outs that would have shielded her home state from some of the bill’s worst harms. Afterward, Murkowski told the press she hoped the House would spare the nation from the bill she’d just voted to pass.
“My hope is that House is going to look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” Murkowski told reporters. In a Wednesday morning email newsletter, Roy laid out his position on the bill, which would include $4 trillion in tax cuts and increase the federal deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over the next decade. The Senate version of bill also would cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion, compared to the $800 billion in the House bill. “From the start, I’ve been clear: I’m committed to passing a bill that delivers for the American people,” Roy said in the email. “One that cuts taxes, reduces the deficit, rolls back the Green New Scam subsidies, and reforms Medicaid so taxpayer dollars go to the truly vulnerable, not able-bodied adults who can work.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson is attempting to power ahead with a vote as early as Wednesday, according to multiple news reports. The Louisiana Republican was able to get an earlier version of the bill over the finish line in May by offering numerous of concessions, many of which were undone in the Senate’s version, the New York Times reports.
House Republican holdouts Roy and Norman might be joined by U.S. Reps.Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, anti-deficit Republicans who voted against the measure in May. U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Indiana, also expressed misgivings about the bill in Tuesday tweet, calling its increase to the national debt “unacceptable.”
Fiscal hawks in the House maintain the bill’s new version violates the budget framework the lower chamber issued earlier this year, which stipulated no new deficit spending. The House Freedom Caucus reiterated the sentiments this week in a tweet, saying “that’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to.”
Despite holdouts from Roy and Norman, the House Rules Committee advanced the bill, which now awaits a vote on the House floor.
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This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 9, 2025.
